Lenovo, the company best known for making some pretty sweet laptops and violating the seventh commandment, has released the IdeaTab A2109 at Best Buy. This 9" slate packs a 1.2GHz Tegra 3 processor, a 1280x800 display, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. At $300, this tablet is just barely more expensive than the comparable 16GB Nexus 7. For your extra $50 you not only get a bigger screen, but a rear facing camera and HDMI output. Not bad.

The A2109 ships with Ice Cream Sandwich on board. No word yet on if a Jelly Bean update is in the works. If you're looking to pick up this tablet either way, you can order it from Best Buy online or head to your local store. Lenovo also has the seven-inch A2107 up its sleeves, but as of right now we have no information on when it will be available. Hopefully the wait won't be too much longer, though. The inexpensive tablet market is heating up rather quickly.

Comments

I wouldn't be surprised if they get Jelly Bean on this tab, but it might take a while. My Lenovo A1 has a pre-released ICS on it when no one ever thought it would get the upgrade from gingerbread. The A1,although outdated, has great build quality. It's heavy but solid. Hopefully they built this one similarly. It has potential to be very competitive.

I'd rather have a smaller 7 inch tablet with an HDMI out... Until they make one, I'll stick with my SGT2 7.0

Himmat Singh

Wow...that's a pretty impressive spec-list for the price. Finally some manufacturer has sense knocked into themselves. We should start seeing much lower priced new tablets from manufacturers in the coming months...all good for the consumer. My next upgrade will be the Nexus 7 if it comes to Malaysia with a very similar (not inflated) price after conversion to the US. Otherwise will upgrade to Tegra 4 next year June. In between, I'm definitely getting a Win 8 tab (probably Surface if it does launch at $199).

Thank you Eric,
The specs don't impress, I hope they're not banking on their rep to sell this, what's with the 16gig? Not 32, 64? chips are cheap, and for a short period they'd have cornered the market with a "SuperDroid".
Lenovo (and a couple of other companies) seem to have a shot in the foot policy of "non-oneupmanship". I don't get it, maybe they take turns.

UniBroW

This should be 1900x1200, 128 gigs of memory, 2 gigs of RAM, external flux drive charging and occasionally crap out magic unicorns for $175. clearly a no buy from me.

but in all seriousness, the one "review" on best buy's site says the display sucks. Take it for what it's worth, if the display is good then this is a good buy. If it turns out to be Viewsonic G tab 2.0 then this sucks.

b_to_the_randon

Yeah.. You can complain about the specs not being "newer" but those are good specs at the $300 range. The make-or-break for this is the quality of the display. If it's Nexus 7 IPS display goodness then we've got a winner.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. I've gone through quite a few tablets, including iPad 1 and 2, as well as a ViewSonic gTablet, ASUS TF100 and HTC Flyer and the Nexus 7 hands down has the best display of any of those.

We will, its awful. No match for my Tab 8.9 screen and one of the worst IPS displays ive seen yet. Like the rest of the N7, its feels cheap. In fairness, it is cheap, but that fact is obvious.

b_to_the_randon

I'll agree with you that a PLS display is going to beat a plain IPS display any day of the week, however you paid a premium for that Tab 8.9 ($440 on Amazon for the P7300, $510 for the P7310).

Again, for what you pay versus what you get, the display on the Nexus 7 blows everything in it's price tier out of the water. Also in response you could drop $499 for a iPad 3 and argue that it makes your P7300's display look ugly.

Actually im in the UK, i paid just £239 for my Tab 8.9, the N7 is £199.

marcusmaximus04

I... think you've either not seen an N7 or are mixing it up with something else. The "poor viewing angles" is the dead giveaway here, everything remains perfect up through ridiculously skewed viewing angles; I'm trying it right now and literally can't get a visible change in color or anything else regardless of the viewing angle.

Seriously -- when are Android hardware manufacturers going to STEP IT UP!? This is embarrassing, compared to Apple hardware. I hate to admit it, but the "new iPad" has a ridiculously nice screen, not to mention a FABULOUS PowerVR SGX540-MP (multi-core) GPU.

Thats a premium device, this isnt. The iPad has other issues, like a non-standard resolution that causes scaling in movies, and to my eyes the wrong aspect ratio. I greatly prefer a real HD resolution to the Retinas resolution.

you haven't been around here very long have you or just not paying attention? the 1200x800 is because of the on screen buttons, apps and such utilize the 1200x720 display. So movies and games are in 720p

UmangKedia

IdeaPad or IdeaTab??

Scott Porter

The box (I bought one at BB today) says IdeaTab. The screen is not good. Much worse than the N7. I know that a bigger screen means more weight -- but it is not comfortable to hold. Once you pass that threshold of not being comfortable, might as well go with a 9.7 or 10.1 screen. The speakers sound better than the N7.

Scott Porter

Okay -- so I didn't get around to return this yet -- I saw somewhere else that the weird flexing around the speakers is because the cover comes off and reveals an MicroSD slot -- my 64GB SanDisk that I got on Amazon during the $49.99 sale works great -- now maybe I keep it after seeing what announcements come out in the next 25 days!!

It costs $50 more than the Nexus 7, with no compelling benefits, other than the 9" display (which probably doesn't cost all that much more).

marcusmaximus04

Look at the teardown analysis of the Nexus 7. The display is the single most expensive component in it, being more than 50% higher cost than the second most expensive component. The second most expensive component, by the way, is the touch layer.

I dont know how nice this feels, but it would be hard to feel and cheap as the N7. The back panel is a joke, you can rip it of with one fingernail! I know this because i did, in an attempt to fix the lifting screen and appalling light bleed.

Himmat Singh

Hah...you never seen that resolution before? Most Android tabs have that resolution. Can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic here.